"The change from the Newport game was significant. We were excellent." - Coventry City's Steven Pressley

31 July 2014

Nick Connoll

The City boss was also delighted with the way the young players performed during the second half...

Coventry City boss Steven Pressley says his players can feel good about themselves after they produced a fine performance to beat Watford 1-0 in their latest pre-season friendly at Boreham Wood.

Marcus Tudgay's first goal for the club after eight minutes was enough to separate the two sides and Pressley said it was his side's attention to detail which pleased him the most.

"The most important thing for me tonight was about making sure we worked to the detail of the principles and philosophy that we base ourselves around. The detail does not change whether you play a 4-4-2 or 5-3-2 and we applied that detail tonight," he said.

"I spoke to the players about pushing lines because we were lazy in the way we did that against Newport and the change from the players was significant. We were much more aggressive and it allowed us to get a quicker and higher press of the game.

"I thought we were excellent. We got our balance and positioning right and there was some great performances across the park."

Pressley added that he was also delighted by the way the younger members of the squad came on to the pitch as part of wholesale changes in the second half and saw the game out.

"We changed the entire team pretty much with 25 minutes to go and we had 17, 18 and 19-year-olds up against a highly talented Watford side and they played to the detail and the organisation we required of them and I tell you I get genuinely excited when I see things like that.

"You can see the type of quality boys like James Maddison, George Thomas and Jack Finch have and there is a lot of encouraging signs but this is now the absolute minimum I expect of all of the players.

"No more letheragy, this is what I expect and no less because the players have played to levels asked of them and they can feel good about themselves tonight."